On technology in the classroom: "Blending offline and online learning"

The advance of technology has brought many changes for the educational field. The proliferation of internet and social networks has allowed education to break some barriers. As a consequence, nowadays teaching and learning do not only take place within the classroom but outside it as well.  “Blended learning”, i.e. the combination of offline and online learning, allows teachers and students to make exchanges outside the classroom extending the learning to many more spaces and times (Harvey Singh, 2003). Moreover, there are many more dimensions of learning that this type of instruction “blends” (i.e. joins together); these include fusing informal and formal learning, collaborative learning and self-placed learning (that which students make on their own at a place and time they arrange), structured and unstructured learning, among others (Singh, 2003).

In my personal experience as a student that has experimented “blended learning”, receiving this kind of education has helped me to improve many of my competences. For example, I could become more autonomous and could discover and get used to using many tools (such as moodle or edmodo) that I could use latter on in my own teaching practices. Working with moodle, in particular, was difficult at first. However, once I discovered how to use it properly it was very convenient to have material available there, or uploading writing assignments from my home, or reading different appreciations on diverse topics and writing my own. Besides this way of online learning was convenient for our context (in which we sometimes have to miss lessons).

All in all , combining “synchronous (face-to-face) and asynchronous (text-based Internet)” (D. Randy Garrison,2004) learning is another step towards the construction of a larger learning community that would make the learning experience much more motivating, interactive, and enriching.